Paying just what's owed on Treasury bonds, even if it were legally or practically possible, wouldn't save the nation’s financial reputation.

Pennsylvanians, U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey is gambling with your retirement funds and other savings.

He’s doing it by aiding and abetting other congressional Republicans who continue to resist raising the nation’s borrowing limit, a step that’s needed so the U.S. government can pay all its bills. Most responsible observers think that failing to pay the nation’s bills on time would trigger worldwide economic turmoil.

Remember when the government’s decision not to bail out Lehman Brothers triggered the Panic of 2008, which led the stock market to crash by 50 percent?

Yeah, chaos like that.

But Sen. Toomey is willing to risk it. To do so, he has to deny the obvious danger.

“There’s zero chance that the U.S. government is going to default on its debt,” he said last week. “It’s unfortunate that people have conflated this idea of not raising the debt ceiling immediately on Oct. 17 and somehow defaulting on our debt.”

Toomey thinks the U.S. Treasury can just arbitrarily decide to pay some bills and put off some others. Pay the really important creditors first – those holding U.S. Treasury bonds, at home and abroad – and hey, hitting the debt ceiling is no big deal.

A long list of business and financial leaders strongly say otherwise. They know better than to gamble on a few ideologically-motivated politicians’ untested predictions about provoking an unprecedented, and possibly catastrophic, event in the nation’s history.

“Among the dozens of money managers, economists, bankers, traders and former government officials interviewed for this story, few view a U.S. default as anything but a financial apocalypse.”

The National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, chief executives of JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, and Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke, all have warned of the disaster that would result.

A lower rating means the government will pay higher interest rates, which will increase the federal deficit.

Remember, we’re talking about making sure the U.S. government has the money it needs to pay all our nation’s bills, for spending that Congress has already authorized.

Paying just what’s owed on Treasury bonds, even if it were legally or practically possible, wouldn’t save the nation’s financial reputation. It would still call the full faith and credit of the United States government into question. It would break the world’s faith in U.S. Treasury bonds, the closest thing in the world to a risk-free investment. That would be an earthshaking event in world finances, with ripple effects that hit anyone who has savings in the bank, a 401k or IRA, or other financial investments.

Sen. Toomey’s gamble is a reckless, irresponsible course that puts the life savings of every American in danger.